Thinkpads Forum

Having used a T60 Flexview for few weeks I'd like to share my experiences with you.

BUILD QUALITY
Solid build quality, the T60 15 inch SXGA+ Flexview x1300 model seems to be indestructible. It feels more indestructible than the T40 Flexview (see my T42 very short review), but does not have the great finish or view of the T4x. The battery is really solid integrated, in contrast to the x60 large battery models I used before. It does not come near the build quality of the x301 (see my x301 review) which really is superb. Overall I'd give it a 9 out of 10 in build quality, and this only as the x301 needs to have a superior rating here. This notebook is heavy - even if I made it around 0,3 kg lighter by removing the installed sata hdd. Its chicony keyboard is very good and I can place my hands completely on the palm rest which is nice for me. Unlike the x6 or x300 series where the palms lay down between notebook and table.

DISPLAY
Really good display, it uses IPS with said 500:1 contrast and is mostly viewable from all sides. You can only compare it to external display panels. Its contrast and viewing angles are of course not as good compared to my eizo PVA panel of 1500:1 contrast, but it is good. IPS is known for having great viewing angles, sucks on your battery and has great colors where PVA panels are known for their great contrast. Todays TN panels that are build in any actual thinkpad with exception of the tablets (these use IPS) do not have any advantages other then that they are cheap and use less battery life, please correct me if I am wrong here. This notebook is great for watching videos. However this display really needs lots of power and you tend to dim it because of that when on the road. When using the office suite, you need to distinguish the text from the background (so you need contrast). When dimming the display the contrast decreases remarcably. Only if it is that dark you want to turn on thinklight, the lowest backlight option is right. I much prefer the 15 inch 4:3 display over a 14 inch 4:3 display for work.

NOISE & TEMPERATURE
There was a high pitch noise coming from the cpu which is called cpu whining but you can turn it off by using additional software like rmclock. I put the sata hdd out and left the first hdd bay empty. I put my somewhat melted pata ssd into a pata hdd ultrabay connector which works great, I'd be happy to turn the ultrabay hdd green light indicator off as it turns on and off all the time. I turned the fan completely off with the software tpfancontrol until 85 celsius. I can work for half an hour and the fan does not turn on even when docked in. I installed the newest bios upgrade - said to be not so good for a silent computer: The lowest fan level 1 has around 3000 RPM, that is loud. The GPU is making the fan turn on, the CPU is always 10 celsius colder. I am thinking about replacing my t60 ati motherboard with a 300€ t60 intel gpu motherboard that is wwan capable. That would help with both temperature and battery life.

SPEED & BATTERY LIFE
System is running vista (with aero disabled) fine with its 2 GB RAM, I do not see any speed improvements to my some years old 1 GB RAM desktop system. Battery life is short with around 2.5 hours with the 6 cell battery on vista with energy saving modus, wlan enabled and near full brightness display. The display here is by far an extreme battery sucker and if you could live with inferior contrast by dimming its display back as far as it goes, you get an additional hour of battery life. The T6 series uses the same batteries and docking solutions like the actual T400 / T500 / W500 series. Batteries tend to loose the capable power within time even if they are not used and brand new. As much as i know lenovo stopped producing any more batteries for the T4 series. So this alone could be a great argument for mobile users whether to buy a T4 or T6 model.

ADVANCED MINI DOCK
I use this thinkpad on an advanced mini dock which provides me with dvi and all my home environment - keyboard, mouse, printer, lan - is connected to the docking. The dock is much easier to use than the dockings for the T4 series. However keyboard and mouse are not responsible when plugged into the dock, I need to put them into the thinkpads usb ports all the time I plug in my notebook. That's really a downside and it seems there are no efforts from lenovo to resolve this bug. When working home, I do not need wireless lan which is usually activated when on the road. I'd really like to see an indicator that wlan is activated. Having the closed thinkpad docked in, I neither see the wlan led indicator nor can easily take a look on the wireless switcher on front of the thinkpad. I'd also like to have sound always activated when the system is docked but disabled when on the road. There is no solution for this. The sound off button from the keyboard is controlling the bios directly: If you turn off the sound and dock the thinkpad in, there is no other solution than to open the display of the docked thinkpad and press the sound button of the keyboard to activate the sound. The T61 series does not control the sound any more over bios.

CONCLUSION
This is a heavy notebook. It has a great display and great keyboard. And that counts if you want to work. I really thought about how to make this notebook lighter, but that is not possible as the weight is really thought of: The display and computer are safe with the good build case that has to have some weight. To make it lighter, I put out the first hdd and its heavy hdd enclose and do not use a notebook case at the moment which safes weight. The system itself does feel solid enough. Anyway, when on the road, if you arrive and put out your t60 to work with, you'll instantly know that the weight is worth the great display.

Nice job on your review....
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My take on the 15" 4:3, T60 & T60p models?
They are my two all time favorite ThinkPads by a wide margin. Had I known for sure they would be the zenith of the line, I would have bought two more and saved them for spares. I will gladly carry the weight, as I have nearly everyday since Feb 2006 when mine arrived from Lenovo.
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Cheers...
posted via BlackBerry Bold

ssd_thinkpad wrote:The T6 series uses the same batteries and docking solutions like the actual T400 / T500 / W500 series.

Is the part about batteries really true? Searching lenovo.com for batteries yields different ones for T60 and T400. Pictures seem to confirm this.

The 6 and 9 cell batteries are interchangeable between the T6 and T400, T500 series.

Ok, I searched around and it seems that T60/T61/T500 batteries indeed seem to be interchangeable. However, T400 seem not. See this pic of the bottom of T400, there's no way a T60 battery would fit there:
http://www.notebookcheck.com/uploads/pi ... arkeit.jpg

Here's a T500 for comparison:
http://www.notebookcheck.com/typo3temp/ ... ab2e89.jpg

Oh and I forgot to say, nice writeup. I just want to clarify this one thing.

Nice review. Thanks!

Indeed, the 14" wide T400 / T61 models use different batteries (4,6,7,9cell).

The 14" standard / 15" standard / 15.4" wide T/R/Z models since the 60 series and up all use the same 6/9-cell batteries.

The SL series also uses the same batteries, a nice bonus.

Some comments on the review.

ssd_thinkpad wrote:Battery life is short with around 2.5 hours with the 6 cell battery on vista with energy saving modus, wlan enabled and near full brightness display. The display here is by far an extreme battery sucker and if you could live with inferior contrast by dimming its display back as far as it goes, you get an additional hour of battery life.

The display does suck a lot of juice, but I think that the GPU itself sucks even more (compared to an integrated one). Although I cannot be sure, as posted numbers do differ a lot. I manage to get 3 full hours on a T60 with ATI X1400 and SXGA+ IPS, using the 6-cell battery (granted, almost brand new), with medium (not low) display brightness and light wireless activity. Since on medium brightness the display still has better contrast than the average Thinkpad TN panel on highest brightness, I deem that acceptable. But that was on XP. Vista is sometimes known to be less battery-efficient.

ssd_thinkpad wrote:If you turn off the sound and dock the thinkpad in, there is no other solution than to open the display of the docked thinkpad and press the sound button of the keyboard to activate the sound.

There is a solution. Using the Keyboard Customizer Utility, you can configure certain key combinations on the external keyboard to function just like the sound buttons on the T60. Yes, that works (at least with XP). I have mine set to Right Ctrl + Up for louder, Right Ctrl + Down for quieter and Right Ctrl + Left for mute. It works both on the internal and the external USB keyboard, and performs the same function as the built-in volume buttons on the keyboard.

However, media buttons on external keyboard (including the Lenovo ones) cannot be made to work like this, because indeed they only control the OS driver volume level, whereas the T60 (and previous models) have the buttons control volume on the BIOS / embedded controller level.

Great review, thanks. I just spent an arm and a leg for a second-hand T60 2007-7KU (15", IPS, 4:3 display, T7400 C2D...) as I also think that it is the ultimate laptop. It cost me NZ$1,200 and friends think I'm crazy as I could have got a new C2D laptop for quite a bit less than that price. However, the new ones at that price-point all have widescreen, lo-res, non-IPS glossy panels. <shudder>
Coming from a 15" R51 IPS machine and wanting more power I really had no option, anything else would have been a downgrade.
I LOVE my 'new' T60. The only machine that I can think of that is better is a T60p and the odds of finding one of those second-hand in excellent condition (in New Zealand) is infinitesimal so I'm happy with my well-specced T60.
LOL, just need to pay off the credit card now.

Wow, that's an amazing T60, and the price is very good too, for such a high-end model, especially since it is likely to have quite a bit of warranty left on it. (I have a 2007-QPG, which is almost the same, except the CPU is T7200 "only").

The T60p is a more powerful, high-end machine, but there are a couple of things where your T60 might actually have an advantage. First, for every day usage, such as browsing, office work, the SXGA+ screen offers plenty space, and slightly bigger, easily readable text. Second, the V5200 GPU in the T60p runs much hotter than the X1400, so unless you are doing intensive 3D gaming / rendering, the humble X1400 is a nicer one.

misfit wrote:The only machine that I can think of that is better is a T60p and the odds of finding one of those second-hand in excellent condition (in New Zealand) is infinitesimal

I think Harryc is selling one over in the Marketplace forum if you're looking. Drop him a PM. Maybe he ships overseas.

Yup there's none better than the IPS. It does suck the juice. I get maybe 2-2.5 hours on my six-cell, but that's all I need. It's too bad they never made a 14" version of the screen. I'd be my perfect notebook.

With lowest brightness and no wireless I manage to get around 10 watt consumption on windows 7. That would make amazing 7 hours with the enlarged battery. With the 6 cell battery and normal usage (wireless, highest brightness) I manage to get around 3 hours.

I much more like the T60 than the T60p, my model with integrated graphics is passively cooled and with its ssd completely silent - and my battery lasts much longer.

dr_st wrote:Wow, that's an amazing T60, and the price is very good too, for such a high-end model, especially since it is likely to have quite a bit of warranty left on it. (I have a 2007-QPG, which is almost the same, except the CPU is T7200 "only").

The price was higher than I could afford really but it's basically my dream machine so I couldn't pass it up. The warranty is good until March 2010. Yeah, your machine is similar. T60s rule!

dr_st wrote:The T60p is a more powerful, high-end machine, but there are a couple of things where your T60 might actually have an advantage. First, for every day usage, such as browsing, office work, the SXGA+ screen offers plenty space, and slightly bigger, easily readable text. Second, the V5200 GPU in the T60p runs much hotter than the X1400, so unless you are doing intensive 3D gaming / rendering, the humble X1400 is a nicer one.

Good points. I do a little light gaming but we're talking old games like Diablo 2 and Age of Empires. Hehee! So this T60 is probably a better fit for me than a T60p. Cool.

FredGarvin wrote:I think Harryc is selling one over in the Marketplace forum if you're looking. Drop him a PM. Maybe he ships overseas.

Yup there's none better than the IPS. It does suck the juice. I get maybe 2-2.5 hours on my six-cell, but that's all I need. It's too bad they never made a 14" version of the screen. I'd be my perfect notebook.

As dr_st pointed out, perhaps this T60 (non-p) is more suited to my needs anyway. Hehee! I couldn't afford this so buying what would essentially be a 5% upgrade machine is out of the question.

I hardly ever undock my machine so battery life is hardly an issue. I've got the (9 cell) battery to only charge when it drops to 40% and then only to charge to 60%. From what I understand of Li-Ion technology that'll extend it's life. If I'm going somewhere and think I'll need more I'll charge to 100% before I go.

I have a more highly specced desktop system that I built less than a year ago but with the price of electricity ever on the increase and the comparative silence of using a laptop I decided to change 'main machines'. My desktop is now only turned on when I run out of space on my laptop HDD and need to transfer files. (The desktop has 3TB of storage.)

Cheers,

@ misfit. This is off topic but looking at your sig I noticed the R51-1829-E5C, SXGA+ IPS, Banias replaced with Dothan. 2/160GB (RAM/HDD). Can you tell me what your CPU idle and load temps are? tpfancontrol in BIOS mode is a good temperature monitor.
http://www.staff.uni-marburg.de/~schmitzr/donate.html

Thanks!

Harryc wrote:@ misfit. This is off topic but looking at your sig I noticed the R51-1829-E5C, SXGA+ IPS, Banias replaced with Dothan. 2/160GB (RAM/HDD). Can you tell me what your CPU idle and load temps are? tpfancontrol in BIOS mode is a good temperature monitor.
Thanks!

Hi Harry. This R51 has been an excellent machine and was my primary up until I got my T60 last week. I'm only relatively new to ThinkPads, having been a hobbyist builder of desktop systems for 10+ years, building gaming machines for mates and overclocking etc. However, for me economy of running costs overcame my need for speed. I've been running lightning-fast machines for years with 95% usage being no more demanding than what I'm doing now. <g>

Therefore, one of the first things I did when I changed to using a ThinkPad for my main machine was to search for tweaking programmes and settled on Notebook Hardware Control. Each time I've got a new ThinkPad it's taken me a week or so of 24/7 running to find the lowest stable vcore for each speed-step. Consequently I'm not sure how useful my data will be to you so I guess I should list my R51 / Dothan 735 vcore settings:

6x was 0.988 now 0.748
8x was 1.052 now 0.828
10x was 1.116 now 0.908
12x was 1.180 now 0.988
14x was 1.244 now 1.084
17x was 1.340 now 1.244

As you can see I got a significant reduction in vcore, especially at the lower multiplier settings. (I've found that Dothans are better that way than Banias by quite a bit.) Consequently I use a custom 'Dynamic Switching' profile with the lowest setting being 10x (1GHz) as even that is running a lower vcore than stock 6x did. It makes the machine fractionally more responsive with less SpeedStepping. (On battery I have the profile set to switch between 6x and 10x.)

Ok, I was running the R51 while I wrote that. As I'm sure you know, CPU temps are influenced by ambient temps. It's the middle of the day in the middle of winter here on a beautiful (but cold) sunny day. Room temp is 14 deg C. The HDD temp is 18 C (while my T60's HDD is 27).

Anyway, I've had Prime95 running for the last 25 minutes on it and it hovered around 59 - 60 deg C, with the fan running at ~3Krpm. Prime95's been stopped now for 5 minutes and the CPU temp has stabilised at 38 C (The fan stopped at 50 C) at 1GHz with CPU load flicking around between 0% and 10%, average 5% I suppose.

I hope that helps. As an aside, I've noticed that NHC and CPU-Z agree on temps completely, down to three decimal places with the Dothan and with Banais CPUs. However with the Merom C2D in this T60, NHC says 0.950V for 6x but CPU-Z (ver 1.49) says 1.063V consistently, when NHC says 1.050V (12x) CPU-Z says 1.163V. <shrug> What's up with that? Which do I believe? I guess ultimately it makes no difference as I've used NHC to set the lowest stable vcore but it makes me wonder if this machine was over-volting in it's stock setup.

Cheers,

Thanks for the detailed reply. When I saw your sig "with Dothan. 2/160GB ", I must have read it too fast, because I assumed that the Dothan was a 2Ghz Pentium M 755. I am interested in putting a PM 755 into an R51. Nice readings you have there though, and good luck with the T60.

Harryc wrote:Thanks for the detailed reply. When I saw your sig "with Dothan. 2/160GB ", I must have read it too fast, because I assumed that the Dothan was a 2Ghz Pentium M 755. I am interested in putting a PM 755 into an R51. Nice readings you have there though, and good luck with the T60.

Ahh, Ok. When I first wrote my sig I got a message that I had too many characters so tried to cut it down but still retain as much info as possible. AFAIK the fastest Dothan IBM/Lenovo put into an R51 was a 745 / 1.8GHz. However it's my understanding that the TDP is the same for all models in the (standard) range from 715 through 755 at 21W. (Apparently, for some odd reason, the slower Dothans weren't as efficient as the faster ones.) I also understand that the vcore tops out at the same across the range. (Could be wrong...)

Therefore, although you might strike problems with the BIOS of an R51 with a Dothan 755 you shouldn't have any thermal problems. Theoretically... I mean, my 735 was supposed to need 1.340V at 1.7GHz yet I was able to drop it to 1.244V. If it was possible to change the multi to 20 I'm sure it would have run fine at 1.340V, meaning it would have the same thermal footprint.

Thanks for the good wishes. All the best for the 755 / R51 project.